


scars upon old wounds

by archivizt



Category: Daredevil (TV), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dreams, Hurt Matt Murdock, Hurt Tony Stark, M/M, Scars, idk what else to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 14:27:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17408618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archivizt/pseuds/archivizt
Summary: tony knows that for whatever hell he's gone through, his other half must be living something similar, fighting tooth and nail as their story is recorded on tony's skin.he knows that his soulmate could die before he ever even gets the chance to meet them.and somehow, he knows his soulmate is like him, that whatever this is that they're doing, that's drawing a tale across tony's skin: they can't stop without losing part of themself.





	scars upon old wounds

**Author's Note:**

> there arent enough dareman fics agadgdjfk so im going to be the change i want to see in the world  
> (also rip the ending is bad whoops)

the world blinks out for a few long seconds, blurring and fading to black.

terror lances through tony's heaving chest. 

shaking hands hold him close and tony  _ screams (tears his throat to shreds trying to be heard)  _ before his vision snaps back into place and he can see the popcorned surface of his ceiling again.

his eyes burn, crackle and splinter and steam with pain. it feels as though the skin around them has blistered, been scalded by boiling water.

he cries himself back to sleep hours later  _ (and when he wakes up jarvis holds a cool, damp cloth to his face and promises tony it will be ok). _

the chemical burns around his eyes never fade.

_ (tony begins dreaming of rough sheets and screaming brakes in the distance, of the scent of incense and a sip of wine muddy on his tongue.)  _

_ (he traces the scars around his eyes when he wakes up and hopes jarvis had told him the truth.) _

-

_ (every since he lost his sight, when matt falls asleep he wishes for dreams of motor oil on his hands and grease tangled in his hair, of the sharp scent of metal and the sight of gleaming stars nestled in the dark sky, painting constellations there.) _

_ (the memories of those dreams, tainted sleep hazy and muddled, are comforting, and he holds them tight whenever he wakes up.) _

sometime in his twenties, matt jerks awake from one of those dreams screaming, shaking beneath his soft blankets and trying to get away from the fire flaring in his chest.

foggy tries to calm him down, but matt can’t breath through the pain, can only feel a foreign weight in his chest and hands shifting through him, tearing him apart piece by bloody piece as harsh fingers tug at his ribs.

_ (his skin is gritty with sweat and panic when matt finally drags himself back, feels foggy's frantic pulse thudding above him, hears the familiar rattle of their air conditioning unit, and lets out a choked sob.) _

in the morning, foggy tells matt that there's a pink scar bursting from the center of his chest, jagged and stretching seven inches from just beneath his collar bone.

_ (he traces it sometimes, feels the tissue catch on his thumb, and ignores the flare of anxiety about what his soulmate may bring him.) _

-

tony is littered with scars by the time he's thirty, none of them his own. there's nicks littering his hands and fingers, a small scar on his upper lip, familiar burns around his eyes.

_ (he dreams of darkness and missing the gleaming stars, of fists against a punching bag and the roar of the city thudding through his veins.) _

but none of those scars are anything like the ones that form when he’s mid-flight to a business meeting, raised and harsh across his chest, to either side of the reactor, high across his right hip and up his back, aching and bright, bright red those first few hours.

when the plane lands, tony scrambles out of his seat gasping, phantom flames seering his skin as another scar tears itself into place just under his ribcage.

_ (he curls up in the hotel room and hides, ignores the terror racing through him and ignores pepper's phone calls until the flames are gone and all he can feel is harsh cotton against his skin.) _

_ (he just wants his soulmate to be safe.) _

-

foggy notices them before matt does, the pale, silvery scars cutting across matt's chest and up his neck. they aren't raised like the one on his chest and the ones littering his fingers, so he can't feel them, and that sits like a stone in matt's stomach, uncomfortable and heavy.

_ (he almost hates the fact that, without foggy, he would never have known they were there.) _

ni pain comes with them, and at first, matt is sure they aren't real. it terrifies him until the aching exhaustion slams into him like a truck days later, and the thought of the scars clicks as reality and matt could cry around the pain from relief.

_ (in the twelve hours he sleeps afterwards, he dreams of blue light, warm and gentle and pulsing, and the taste of metal and coconuts and life burning in the back of his throat.) _

_ (matt doesn't tell foggy that he thinks his soulmate almost died that day.) _

-

rhodey is scared for him. tony can see it in his eyes.

his hands are hesitant over the harsh lines scattered across tony's abdomen, over the glaring red of a fresh wound puckered in the flesh of his shoulder. 

“tones—” he starts, voice broken and sad, a hand settling just beside the gunshot wound.

_ (heavy as the sky upon tony's back, heavy as the knowledge that for every scar he’s put on his soulmate he's earned one back, heavy as the reminder that he's human stretching across his side in raised tissue.) _

“i know,” he interrupts his best friend, meets his eyes, grabs his hands and holds on because— “i know and i'm terrified.”

_ (he knows that for whatever hell he's gone through, his other half must be living something similar, fighting tooth and nail as their story is recorded on tony's skin.) _

_ (he knows that his soulmate could die before he ever even gets the chance to meet them.) _

_ (and somehow, he knows his soulmate is like him, that whatever this is that they're doing, that's drawing a tale across tony's skin: they can't stop without losing part of themself.) _

-

claire tells him she knows who his soulmate is.

she's stitching a bullet wound on his shoulder closed and her breath still smells like mint toothpaste because he had woken her up at midnight by tumbling through her window.

she taps a finger against his bare chest, over the thick scarring beside his heart. 

_ (the feeling is muted and wrong and matt nearly curls away before remembering he has a needle in his shoulder.) _

_ (it feels so different from any of the other scars, gaping and sore even so many years later.) _

“i know where this is from,” her fingers move to trace some of the silvery lines spiraling from his heart, “and all of these.”

matt doesn't ask her for the name, just waits as she continues stitching him up.

_ (but his soul aches to know, to go and find this person who he's left so much pain to, to go and trace their ribs where nobu's blades had dug into matt's skin.) _

-

pepper escorts a man into tony's lab at noon on a wednesday. he's wearing a suit without a tie and clutching a white cane to his chest and beside him pepper is as composed as ever, even though tony knows she was supposed to be in a meeting with the board exactly five minutes ago.

“this,” pepper starts, meeting tony's eyes with a steely certainty masking washed out wariness, “is matthew murdock.”

_ (there are scars on matthew's hands and peeking from his collar and some part of tony’s mind sings with familiarity before he dismisses it as wishful thinking.) _

when he shakes tony's hand with a nervous smile, the man tells him, “just matt is fine dr. stark,” before pulling away.

“then you can call me tony,” he replies, studying the nervous tick of matt's jaw.

_ (tony doesn't know why matt is here, doesn't know what made pepper bring him to his lab, doesn't understand anything that's happened in the past few minutes.) _

silence stretches between them, elastic and thick, as seconds tick slowly by before matt finally sighs and straightens his shoulders, obviously steeling himself for something.

“i'm sorry to intrude on your work but,” he hesitates a moment, then another before reaching for the collar of his button down, “i really needed to show you this.”

_ (he trusts pepper to the moon and back, but he doubts her judgement for a split second in that moment.) _

and then matt is shrugged his jacket and shirt off and is holding them over his left arm, staring somewhere over tony's shoulder, his frame stiff with tension.

_ (there is a scar swirling right beside matt's heart, its claws tracing up his neck and out across his chest in thin silvery tendrils, all rooted in a glaring pink center.) _

_ (right where the reactor is nestled in tony's chest.) _

-

_ (matt still dreams in blurry images and pinpricks of light piercing a metal coffin, of falling and being helpless) _

_ (but now he also dreams of breakfast in bed and a shoulder against his, of tired smiles and red, red, red.) _

_ - _

_ (tony still dreams of incense warming his lungs and blood soaking his hands, of purpling bruises and the clatter of boots on concrete.) _

_ (but now he also dreams of warm hands and gentle kisses, of cool metal against overheated  _ _ skin and the overwhelming smell of home.) _

_ - _

later, when the dust had settled and a few chaotic weeks had given quietness a chance to worm its way between them, matt leaned forward and into tony, hands folded between them as if in prayer. tony held onto him and smiled into matt's neck, warm and soft and thundering with fear and joy.

_ (matt's pulse echoes the sentiment, racing frantically to match the pace of tony's.) _

**Author's Note:**

> come to talk to me about dareman on [tumblr](murdvck.tumblr.com) or leave a comment!!!


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